


The Speaker and The Listener

by aerinofthestarsandseas



Category: Warriors - Erin Hunter
Genre: Poetry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2019-11-29
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:13:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21605860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aerinofthestarsandseas/pseuds/aerinofthestarsandseas
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	1. Chapter 1

Hollyleaf has always heard the ghosts of cats who didn't go to the Stars or the Dark Forest. She has spoken to the spirits of skeptical warriors, loners, rogues, and even the occasional kittypet. She has known them all her life. 

( _ We have been waiting for you _ .  _ You were made to give us peace. You don’t need to be a part of the Three to be powerful. We are all you need _ .) 

Hollyleaf  _ needs _ the Code, without it she wouldn't have a way to control the voices in her head. ( _ The ghosts once told her that she has no reason to follow the Code, as her own birth had broken it. She hadn't believed them then, she knows better now. _ )

Hollyleaf  _ saw _ Tadpole first. He was a small black-furred kit and was constantly dripping water everywhere. He told her that he was Brambleclaw’s half-brother, his own brother is in the Dark Forest and his sister is a Medicine Cat who doesn't believe in StarClan. ( _ He calls Hollyleaf “Little Niece,” despite the fact she is now older and bigger than him. _ ) 

Hollyleaf thought she needed to become a Medicine Cat to bring peace to the voices in her head. The ghosts disagreed, but they didn’t deny her her choice. 

Jayfeather had entered his sister’s mind only once, when he was still a kit. It was an accident, really, as most things are. He never did it again.

It was dark, even darker than his own vision. And there are voices  _ everywhere _ . Some are whispers, some are screams, and Jayfeather felt like he was drowning. Once upon a time he was Jay’s Wing, and he never wants to drown again ( _ and again and  _ **_again_ ** ). 

(He was  _ scared _ .)


	2. Chapter 2

For a while, Hollyleaf’s dreams were filled with sharp white bones ( _ wear ‘em like a collar around your throat _ ) and blood and a barley field filled with ravens. 

She met Blood Clan, and with Blood Clan she met Scourge, a small but vicious black-furred tom with one white paw and sharp bones around his throat. He told her how he killed Tigerstar, and how he was Firestar’s half-brother. Which was something Firestar didn’t know himself, but the dead knew  _ everything _ and were willing to share ( _ but only with her _ ).

Scourge promised to teach her to fight, to  _ kill _ .

( _ He did not break that promise. _ )

Ravenpaw was shy while living in Thunder Clan, he said. He grew into himself when he left them, though. He fought and died and waited for  _ home _ . 

Barley was kind, if suspicious of her at first, with her blood-black coat and green ( _ice cold blue and poison yellow_ ) eyes. Even with Blood Clan whispering ( _screaming_ ) in the back of her head, she did not blame him for leaving them.


	3. Chapter 3

There was a fire and there was Ashfur ( _who almost killed Firestar, who almost killed_ **_them_** ) and how _dare_ Squirrelflight say _that_ in front of her brothers, her poor little prophecy-bound brothers. Hollyleaf had known Squirrelflight and Brambleclaw weren’t her parents for quite some time, this revelation didn’t bother her much. But her brothers—it was tearing them apart trying to find who their real parents were. So she pretended. 

For them. 

Ashfur was a  _ threat _ . 

Hollyleaf didn’t care that he was going to tell the Clans they weren’t the kits of Squirrelflight and Brambleclaw. He had been ready to  _ kill _ them. 

( _ Kill him, kill him, oh darling one. Kill the threat and send him down down down  _ **_down_ ** .  _ Down to drown in the lake—the dark watery grave with us-s-s. _ )

_ (Remember--remember?--when he plotted to kill kill kill Grandfather with Hawkfrost the Traitor?) _

He, unfortunately, did not drift down the stream to the lake. He was found when Thunder Clan was headed to the Gathering, gutted open like a fish  _ (as one of the rogues described. Scourge was  _ **_laughing_ ** _ in the back of her head).  _

All the cats looked horrified, like they were going to be sick. Hollyleaf just looked on with disdain, her tail twitching slightly.

She had to tell ( _ tell tell tell  _ **_tell them_ ** ) what she was, what her brothers were, who her parents were (how they  _ lied _ ). 

She leaped up to a branch of the Great Tree, the spirits of some forgotten Sky Clan warriors helping her up. She rose tall and told _ (Let me tell you all a story...) _ the secret that Leafpool and Squirrelflight and  _ Star Clan _ had kept for years. 

She ran. How freeing it felt! But then she was crushed by falling rocks.

Jayfeather’s cries mixed with those in the tunnels. 


	4. Chapter 4

In the tunnels, she thought she would find a respite--solace--from the deathly choir in her head. ( _Oh little one, so many of us are here, you can’t hide from us_.) There were so many more-- 

Rocks. Rock. 

Her baby brother, hairless and old and still blind. He had gone back in time to get the Tribe of Rushing Water to the mountains and stayed and stayed and  _ stayed _ . 

He had not died. ( _ Jay’s Wing died in the tunnels, sister, don’t you hear him? _ ) 

(Once someone said,  _ You’re too powerful to be lost in the past. _ ) 

He was the Speaker while she was the Listener. And soon, Rock said, she would be the Speaker and another would Listen. 

A tom followed her around, not unusual, but he was a quiet thing unlike the others. His form also had a hint of solidity that the others seemed to lack. His fur dripped water that dissipated before it hit the ground. Like Tadpole’s, but she had not seen him in some time. (She wondered why.)

His name was Fallen Leaves. ( _ Is it going to rain? Yes? No? _ ) He was waiting for his mother. 


	5. Chapter 5

… Silence. Blessed  _ silence _ . 

Hollyleaf  _ (Who is Hollyleaf?) _ did not remember a mere  _ moment _ of silence in her life. Perhaps Hawkfrost did her a service then. She laughed. 

There was another. 

His name was Tree.

_What kind of name is_ _that_?

She didn’t realize she had spoken aloud (or that he could Hear her) until the yellow tom turned to look  _ at  _ her and asked, politely, who she was. 

She blinked. Then she smiled. 

Who was she to refuse him?

She was the Speaker. He was the Listener. 

He called her Holly because she asked him to. It was also a bit of a joke between them as his name was Tree. 

  
  



End file.
